Can I use Hubspot for a private forum on my website??

[LouieBrown]

Totally new to Hubspot, but excited about the opportunity. We are a small recruitment company but with a large(ish) network of candidates. We'd love to use Hubspot to communicate opportunities with our network of candidates, can it do this?

• We use the candidate database in Hubspot to send out notifications to relevant candidates when we have new roles that would be relevant to them
• Ideally, we also want to set up a private message network/forum on our website, where we (admin) can post new Client jobs and candidates can view the details and respond to us if they are interested, or recommend someone that would be. Ideally we'd create a login for this private network/forum, and restrict the messaging to being between candidate and Admin.omegle xender

I know Hubspot has a communicator module, I'm totally new to the whole product suite, just getting my head around it. Would it be suitable?

Thanks

[GuyTaylor]

Hi @LouieBrown, this is a excellent question!

HubSpot is commonly used by recruiting firms, I personally find that it works brilliantly for this use-case. 

Communicate opportunites with a network of candidates:
HubSpot allows you to email a list of contacts with ease, it's a core feature. Add people to your list thru forms, thru automation, or manually. You can create multiple lists... perhaps one for candidates that are casually looking and another for those actively looking - whatever suits your needs. 

Send out notifications to candidates with relevant new roles:
For this you would create a list and name it something like 'Senior JavaScript Roles'. Anyone interested in this type of role goes onto the list. When there is related roles/news you can email everyone on the list with ease. 

Private message network/forum
Things get both interesting and overwhelming here. Below is a list of commonly used options, I share thoughts on how to pick one further down.

-3rd party hosted forum such as discourse.org. Here is a example of a big company(Webflow) using discourse: Example here.
-HubSpot website + talki embeded forum. More details here.
-Discord
-Slack

HubSpot website + embed is my least favorite option.
I think the talki forums provide a subpar experience compared to other options. But on the upside it is relatively easy to setup with a HubSpot website and displays directly inside of the website. Displaying inside your existing website is it's one big benefit.

3rd party hosted forum such as discourse.org. 
This is a solid option for the following reasons: 1) You immediatly get a visually nice, fully featured, and hosted forum. 2) It doesn't matter who handles your website, this forum works regardless. 3) It requires very little technical expertise. Sure technical expertise will be handy if you want customizations but the out-of-the-box experience is good so customizations are a luxury. Down side to this approach is price. One other small downside(vey small) is embedding this software into a existing page on your website is painful so just let it be a standalone page.

Discord/Slack
There are several recruiting companies that use Discord/Slack as their forum, job board, and candidate notification system. This is a good option for the following reasons: 1) customizing these systems require little to no technical expertise. 2) They are incredibly popular so for most people there is no training needed or confusion when using the platform. 3) Just like the previous option this will work with any website.

There is more to say on this topic but this post is already quite long. Just a few other items to be aware of:
-There are several helpful LinkedIn-HubSpot integrations. My company(linkedhub.io) is just one option there is also a native option.
-The deals feature within HubSpot is a nice way to visualize and keep track of candidate workflows.
-HubSpot has easy to use automation that will help with list management and other tasks.

Guy Taylor | linkedhub.io

[Ben_M]

To answer your first question as to whether you can, the short of this answer is yes.  But having worked with many solutions and clients, I don't know if in your situation a tool like Hubspot that is targeted, and more importantly priced, for B2B companies, I don't know whether it will be the most effective solution long-term for your needs as recruiting services would be closer aligned to B2C which are targeted at a large volume of prospects.

To your larger question about setting up a forum and job board, I don't think Hubspot website software would be the best for your needs in this option beyond just storing for communications.  There are job board apps which would be more effective at managing your use case, and also if someone wants to setup an account to login or collect information to store, they would be compliant whereas Hubspot forbids collecting things like passwords so that users can come back later.  And with forum software (for instance Hubspot uses Lithium software), again you would likely be better with a third party solution whether hosted yourself on your own server or rented through the third party.